Cincinnati

Monday, August 29, 2005

More news...

"Catastrophic" seems to be the word of the week here!

Today's big news was NOT Hurricane Katrina, but rather a rail tanker spewing dangerous chemical fumes all over Cincinnati. If the chemicals combust, the tanker will rip apart and explode into a giant fireball, propelling like a rocket anything up to a mile in any direction!!! You can see what I'm talking about by clicking onto the following link:

Needless to say, the suburb surrounding the tanker has been completely evacuated, and all the schools and businesses are closed. If anyone attempts to enter the suburb this evening, they will be arrested. (This is actually to prevent looters from having a party with an entirely empty suburb of houses ... welcome to Cincinnati, hahaha!)

I could smell the fumes all day. Just like very strong cleaning ammonia - and I'm not even all that near by!

It may take several days to stop the tanker spewing and to prevent an explosion. What a lovely week...

Sunday, August 28, 2005

Catastrophic Katrina

Typical ... Hurricane Katrina would be the "most severe hurricane ever recorded in history!" wouldn't it? They just stated on the news that it "will be the biggest storm ever to hit New Orleans" ... and it is the storm the U.S. has "feared for years".

When it hit Florida on Friday, it was a category '1' hurricane. It killed something like seven people before quickly whirling itself back out to sea.

Now it is heading for the coast of New Orleans as a category 5!!! Oh my god. Technically, for a hurricane, that is "catastrophic". Poor, poor, New Orleans... :-(

There have only ever been three category 5 storms recorded in the history of the U.S. It is bigger than Hurricane Andrew was. Even worse, is that New Orleans is a particularly low-lying city and therefore is particularly vulnerable.

It is currently blowing at 165 miles per hour and it looks HUGE on the satellite images mesmorising the TV screen ... it will be arriving in Cincinnati on Tuesday.

Thursday, August 25, 2005

Hurricane Katrina

How ironic that the latest hurricane to hit the U.S. is named Katrina, hahaha! (I want to know how they pick the names?!)

So far it has been thrashing the coast of Florida for two hours and already two people are dead. All day I have been hearing: "Be sure not to cause too much mayhem and destruction in Florida tonight, hahaha!" Hmmm .... if only I had such powers over the weather, ha!

Mind you, if I did, then not only would there be no hurricanes, there would also be no tornadoes, no ice storms, no hot humid weather, no frigid cold winters ... let me think, what else? Hehehe. :-D

Saturday, August 20, 2005

Moving house, and making the finals...

I moved house again today ... for the fourth time in two months. Hopefully this one willbe the last for a while though, because the novelty of lugging a tonne of boxes up and down several flights of stairs in humid 36 degree celcius heat, is wearing a little thin now. :-)

I spent the summer break either house-sitting or subletting, but now that school is all but back in, everyone is returning to Cincinnati and needing their homes back, of course! So, I have returned to the place I moved into when I first left my on-campus apartment back in June ... the beautiful suburb of Mount Adams, woohoo! :-D (I promise to take some pictures of the area soon, although compared to NZ it is not going to look like all that much, hahaha. But trust me, for central Cincinnati? It is great! I actually feel relatively safe here, considering I have never heard a gun go off near me, and the sound of sirens is pretty rare. :-)

I have been watching the news like crazy this week, keeping my fingers crossed that my favourite mens tennis player, Roger Federer, will make it into the US Open Tennis final I am going to tomorrow. He DID!!! Oh yay!!! I cannot wait to see him live on court!!! It will be cool to see Andy Roddick too, so roll on tomorrow! :-D

Friday, August 19, 2005

Tornado times

Eighteen tornadoes ripped through the state of Wisconsin last night. Yes - that was 18!!!! Thank god Cincinnati only managed a couple of hours of severe thunderstorms and approximately 6 inches of rain, hahaha! Afterall, what's a little low-level flooding compared to roofs and houses ripped apart, huh? :-)

This week I have been busy buying textbooks. All of them second-hand .... but still approximately US$300 worth, ugh! New semesters always succeed at draining the bank account, hmph. :-(

Monday, August 15, 2005

Tennis and a new term...

Today was day one of the US Open Masters Tennis Series in Cincinnati. Luckily for me I have two free tickets to the Grand Final, woohoo!! Now I simply just cannot wait until August 21, haha!

The only pity is that the defending champion - Andre Agassi - had to pull out of the competition due to his back injury, but hopefully someone else just as fantastic will be playing in the final for me to see. (I must remember to take my camera!! :-)

Other than that, the last few weeks have been entirely taken up with work, sleep, more work, and more sleep. I can't believe that the three month summer break is almost over! Classes for the Fall semester start up this time next week. Wow ... but I guess that's what happens when all you do is work and sleep, haha. :-)